Paved Paradise
How Parking Explains the World
Published on 9. May 2023
368 pages
978-1-9848-8114-4 (ISBN)
Description
Shortlisted for the Zócalo Book Prize
Named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and The New Republic
"Consistently entertaining and often downright funny." -The New Yorker
"Wry and revelatory." -The New York Times
"A romp, packed with tales of anger, violence, theft, lust, greed, political chicanery and transportation policy gone wrong . . . highly entertaining." -The Los Angeles Times
An entertaining, enlightening, and utterly original investigation into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American life-the humble parking spot
Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a shocking number of Americans kill one another over parking spots, and we routinely do ridiculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. Since the advent of the car, we have deformed our cities in a Sisyphean quest for car storage, and as a result, much of the nation's most valuable real estate is now devoted to empty vehicles. Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, traffic patterns and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, and the overall quality of public space. Is this really the best use of our finite resources? Is parking really more important than everything else?
In a beguiling and absurdly hilarious mix of history, politics, and reportage, Slate staff writer Henry Grabar brilliantly surveys the nation's parking crisis, revealing how the compulsion for car storage has exacerbated some of our most acute problems- from housing affordability to the accelerating global climate disaster-and, ultimately, how we can free our cities from parking's cruel yoke.
Named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and The New Republic
"Consistently entertaining and often downright funny." -The New Yorker
"Wry and revelatory." -The New York Times
"A romp, packed with tales of anger, violence, theft, lust, greed, political chicanery and transportation policy gone wrong . . . highly entertaining." -The Los Angeles Times
An entertaining, enlightening, and utterly original investigation into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American life-the humble parking spot
Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a shocking number of Americans kill one another over parking spots, and we routinely do ridiculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. Since the advent of the car, we have deformed our cities in a Sisyphean quest for car storage, and as a result, much of the nation's most valuable real estate is now devoted to empty vehicles. Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, traffic patterns and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, and the overall quality of public space. Is this really the best use of our finite resources? Is parking really more important than everything else?
In a beguiling and absurdly hilarious mix of history, politics, and reportage, Slate staff writer Henry Grabar brilliantly surveys the nation's parking crisis, revealing how the compulsion for car storage has exacerbated some of our most acute problems- from housing affordability to the accelerating global climate disaster-and, ultimately, how we can free our cities from parking's cruel yoke.
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05/2024
Penguin USA
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05/2023
The Penguin Press
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Person
Henry Grabar is a staff writer at Slate who writes about housing, transportation, and urban policy. He has contributed to The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal, and was the editor of the book The Future of Transportation. He received the Richard Rogers Fellowship from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and was a finalist for the Livingston Award for excellence in national reporting by journalists under thirty-five.
